Withering Snow
by Rui
Summary: A deeper insight to book 3. Rain's flashback as told through his eyes.


Withering Snow

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Author's Note: Hi! This is my first Immortal Rain fic and was inspired one night when I was suppose to be typing up a paper for one of my finals. . It's three in the morning and I still have to do that teehee. Anyway, be kind. If you don't like it, don't read it!

Disclaimer: All the awesome character belong to Kaori Ozaki. The songs lyrics are "How Did I Fall in Love With You" sung by the Backstreet Boys. .;;;

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I was going to tell her, really, I was. Someday. 

I wasn't always in love with her, far from it. I remember when we both came to the orphanage. I was eight and she was six and the first thing we did when we saw each other was stick out our tongues. It seemed logical to us at that age. Girls had cooties.

She came from the south and I was from the north, another problem. My parents were killed during a raid. How did I survive? I hide up a tree. Actually I was up in the tree fast asleep when the raid happened, I didn't even wake up to the screams or gun shots.

Her mother died young and her father was a soldier. Long story short, he was killed in action and she came to the orphanage. We kept a completely 'that _person_ isn't there' attitude for at least a month, that's when Yuca came.

No one knew much about him, but Freya and I tried hard to get him to side with one of us but in the end he was the bridge. She got use to me and I finally came to see her as a friend.

Remember when, we never needed each other

Within a year the three of us were inseparable. Yuca and I began training as priests since there was nothing else to really train for and Freya studied to become a nun. Because of our similar studies, needless to think, we spent a great deal of our time stuffed together in a small room memorizing scripture or outside horsing around with the younger kids.

It went on like this for years, we weren't the oldest but we were the in-between age group. I was close to another guy who was named Charel. He was about year older than us and following the footpaths of the cloth. He was a great help to us all and even promised to keep my secret safe. How would it look if a priest couldn't read or even write his own name?

He offered to teach me, but I declined. I'd rather play outside instead of spending more time in the small room. I'd rather be around people than be by myself. Charel understood this after some time and he even learned to laugh at my childlike optimism.

"Too bad you're going to be a priest, kid. You'd slay those girls." I didn't get what he meant, and made him laugh harder when I said I had no intention of killing anyone.

Freya was also friends with Charel and looked up to him as a brother. Yuca was indifferent, as he often was to the older kids. Maybe its because he knew their fate before they did. Maybe he knew that they'd turn nineteen and be sent to die in the war.

Either way, we were happy, close friends that were content in the safety of neutral zone.

_The best of friends like  
Sister and Brother_

Then Charel left. Charel left but the cross he wore around his neck came back in a small box and attached to it was a letter. Freya was able to hold back her tears until the younger kids were gone. I broke down with her and Yuca had to be the calm and rational one. He kept insisting that our 'brother' went to a better place.

Freya's words rung in my mind, "But he went alone!" She had sobbed out those words in such a voice I'm sure it was the angels crying that night, and not rain that hit the windows of the church.

Yuca was the one who pulled us through with a gentle smile and kind words. Charel had lived his life, had done what he wanted to with it and the good died young in order to be spared the hardships that would follow later.

A month after the letter about Charel's death, Freya had come up to me while I was sitting outside watching the stars and asked me a question that would also linger with me for many years.

"Rain," I had turned my attention towards her. "Promise me---that you won't ever let me die alone."

I gave her my biggest smile. "I promise I'll never let you die!" She bopped me on the head and told me to be serious. But at the end of the night, she was smiling again.

_We understood, we'd never be, _

_Alone_

Then one day I noticed something had changed. I was sixteen and she was fourteen and I couldn't take my eyes off of her. Freya didn't even realize it but Yuca did. I would watch her when we would all go outside to play or to do chores. I couldn't help but watch her because looking at her was like rejecting an angel.

The more I looked, the less I talked and before long, she thought I didn't like her again. I laughed when Yuca asked me if I was upset with her. I shook my head and said it wasn't anything important. I lied to him. I didn't like doing it but I also didn't want him to worry over me.

Not to mention, as much as I looked at Freya, she spent looking at Yuca.

The kids picked up on my attraction because I guess I was bluntly obvious about it but hers? They could never guess it. They'd ask her but she'd always give ridiculous answers.

I didn't know if Yuca knew how lucky he was since he spent most of his time just observing random things, or reading.

It wasn't until a few months later, I knew the real trouble I was in.

I was in love with Freya.

And she was in love with Yuca.

_Those days are gone, and I want so much_

The ceiling became my favorite thing to look at when I lay awake at night. There were two large beds in the boys' room. Yuca slept on one and I on the other surrounded by the smaller kids. They would cling to me and snore and I'd lay there, hand tucked behind my head searching for the words to tell her.

She never let on that she knew if she did know. Yuca only smiled at me when I finally was able to talk to her again, but it came out as a clumsy sentence that made no sense. Freya asked if I hit my head too many times falling out of trees or something.

"Just been fallen on too many times." I smiled back. Her face went red in embarrassment. She was notorious for loosing her balance and toppling out of the trees. The sister would always roll her eyes. I caught her many times, often less graceful than I wished.

I used my back as a brace because I was afraid that one I got her in my hands, in my arms, I'd have to live with that memory as well. I'd have to let her go and then be cursed with the feeling of holding her so close, just to lose her in the end.

I didn't even have her to hold on to, I don't know why I was so fearful about losing something I never had.

The night is long and I need your touch

Yuca was the first to pin it down.

"You like her, don't you?" I gave him my biggest smile, the one that was suppose to make him think that I was goofing off again but he raised an eyebrow and patted me on my head. "It's okay, Rain. It's only natural."

I blinked as he slowly withdrew from sight.

I stared at the floor in front of me. I was suppose to be scrubbing down the sanctuary, but instead I sat there motionless. I didn't know what to do about the way I felt. I didn't think it was right and began to try hard to hide what it was I felt.

Freya was happy that I got over my 'sickness' and came back to my senses. She didn't seem to have a clue that I still couldn't take my eyes off of her. It took a few weeks before I began to really feel uncomfortable about my new situation.

I felt like I was lying to her all the time, lying to myself as well.

What could I do? There was nothing to say, no way to tell her anything. I would look at Yuca, the one she liked, and wonder about our differences and why it was him she had decided to like.

He was smart and more serious than I was. Where he was a mystery, I was an open book. The kids thought I was warm and friendly and Yuca came off as a bit too cold. Maybe it was because he was so smart that he didn't feel the need to indulge the younger ones need to be creative, or their curiosity.

That's when the army started to talk to him.

Freya was worried they were going to recruit him and even said that I could take his place but then withdrew that choice thinking that I wasn't the type of person you give a gun to. One of the kids asked if it was because I would try to stick a flower in the barrel and Freya said no, it was because I was too kind to hurt someone else.

My heart, if possible, softened even more.

But that was the time when my coughing spells started.

Don't know what to say  
I never meant to feel this way…

At first, Sister thought it was just a minor cold and told me to sleep in the old Priest's room in order to prevent any sickness from spreading. The kids moaned about this because they lost their large heater. I laughed and said they could tackle Yuca, which they did. Turns out they'd rather be warm than afraid.

I slept in the old bed, trying to sleep and at first I thought it was great. I got a room and bed all to myself! Wouldn't the other two be jealous?

But soon, I missed the company of the boys. It was nice to feel needed here, even if it was only to produce heat for their consumption. I missed having people around me all the time.

After a month, I was able to beg the Sister into letting me back into the large boys' room. It was under the condition that if my coughing got any worse, I'd have to go see the doctor and if I got anyone else sick she'd make me scrub the entire church and repaint it with my own hair.

I gave her a nervous laugh and a nod.

Freya admitted to being worried that my little cold might be something else. I gave her a goofy grin and told her not to worry about me! I'd be fine!

"Are you sure?" She had asked, giving me a skeptical glance.

"Yup!" I hit myself gently in the stomach. "My hot body won't be taken down by any type of cold!"

She hit me over the head, gently and laughed. "You are anything but modest, Rain."

If only she knew. I'd do anything to see her smile because she was such a worrisome person. I guess I was getting a big head then, too. To think that she would worry about me so much.

It hurt, but I couldn't stop wanting to make her smile.

_What can I do, to make you mine…_

The only time I found that I didn't have a problem with watching her and her knowing about it is when she picked up her violin. She'd written the song she played so often. Freya told me it was the only song her heart knew and she couldn't play anything that wasn't from her heart.

I asked her if that was a way of saying she couldn't play anything else. Her eyebrow ticked and she picked up the violin and played 'Happy Birthday'.

"And don't expect anymore of a present than that, brat." She stuck out her tongue and laughed at my puppy eyes I made. Of course that wasn't the only thing that she gave me, she and the other girls made me a birthday cake. The boys worked hard and created something that was suppose to be a drawing of a bird. It looked like a flat cat with about ten legs.

She picked up her violin again and played her song, and this time I knew it was just for me. It was her official gift. Those lyrics that haunt me because in my mind, they are sung by a ghost.

"_Don't cy on a sleepless night. Don't fall down in a cold rain. Live, live. Take me into the distant future."_

I didn't know just how those words would come to torture me. There are times, still, when I think about them and break down and cry. How can I still cry after all these years?

_I hear your voice  
And I start to tremble_

After my birthday, things about the war got steadily worse. Yuca got worse and the mean from the army dropped by more often. He began to withdraw from normal activities. He wouldn't go to the church for daily Mass. Sister would reprimand him and he'd insist he was too busy working on making the world a better place.

I was also getting worse. My strange cold/flu that wouldn't go away seemed to be taking a toll on my appetite and my general health. Yuca asked why I would be giving most of my food away at meals but the truth was, I wasn't hungry.

If I ate, I felt horrible but if I didn't eat, I'd only get weaker so I ate enough to get back. This sickness worked well in timing because the food supply was beginning to taper off. Sister wouldn't come out and say it to any of the older orphans (Freya, Yuca and myself) but we could all see it in the lines around her eyes and the way she's take out the time to say just one more extra blessing for the meal.

I'd say my prayers but I found them becoming less honest and more and more selfish. I wanted Freya more than I let on and I wanted her to love me. I wanted to be around her, to see her smile, to make her happy. I wanted her to look at me the same way she looked at Yuca.

When I'd catch myself, I would shake my head with a sad laugh. Sister and Yuca gave me sympathetic looks since they knew, well, everyone but Freya seemed to know.

I managed to talk Sister out of many appointments, claiming that it was too much money and that I would be fine. But when I started to cough up blood, she insisted that I go to her friend in town who was only made it half way through medical school, but was still better than nothing.

That doctor's visit that wouldn't make any of my wants important.

Brings back the child that, I resemble

At first, when they told me that it was Leukemia, I hadn't a clue what that was. Then Sister began to cry and say that I was too young to be struck by this. They explained it to me very thoroughly but the only part I heard is that I was going to die before I saw twenty.

When I went back to the orphanage after getting that type of news, you just---I don't know, you just see things through a different set of eyes. I started to cherish those small kids that clung to me even more.

The first thing I did when I got back, of course, was to be Freya's landing cushion when she fell out of another tree. She asked me what I was doing and thinking fast, not wanting my new pain of knowing my lifespan was shorter than anyone knew, I quickly answered, "Just some push-ups."

"I'm light as an angel, right?" She smiled at me and my heart began to swell and melt at the same time.

Again, I didn't want this to show so I came back with that she weighed as much as a chicken and she knocked me in the back of the head. I wanted to embrace it all. I wanted to live my life for all it was worth and know that someone knew how much I loved them.

A few days later, Sister announced that we were having a food shortage. When I said that I was getting fat, I was shocked to hear that Freya had noticed my lack of eating as it was. Thankfully, Yuca came to my rescue by joining in my insistence that even if celibate, we priests didn't have to forfeit our super bodies.

She tackled him for saying such a kind thing and I couldn't help but smile. It was just a part of life. If I couldn't be around to make them smile, then I'd be around to make sure that I left memories that would.

Then came Mayu's letter. Yuca read it for me and I could have fallen over from shock. "I hope you marry Freya." It was a pretty big statement coming from a little girl. Yuca although joking, offered to teach me to read so that I might be able to write her a love letter.

I smiled sadly at that as my heart contracted painfully in my chest. What would the point be? To make her cry because I wouldn't be around to love? To be more realistic, she'd cry because she'd feel sorry for me because I knew she was in love with Yuca.

I just had to go on being friends with her.

That's all I could do, anything else would be completely selfish on my part.

_I cannot pretend, that we can still be friends_

Yuca became even stranger and more estranged from the group as the days went by slowly. Freya became worried and so did I. She confided in me about his odd behavior and his abnormal questions.

His eyes became empty, as if nothing around him would make him happy. Nothing, not living, not Freya not being so looked up to. None of the things that I wished I had so that I might know a truer happiness before I was to pass on.

I wasn't going to be the first though, Mayu, sweet and innocent Mayu. Freya was the one to find her in the field, had watched as the missile landed close to her and broke, killing the small, fragile child in an instant.

The loudness of the missile hitting the ground rattled the entire orphanage and instantly the children began to cry as I herded the boys down the steps to the basement. That's when I noticed that Freya wasn't there. My heart froze, where was she?

Was she okay? How close did the explosive hit? Oh God, I remember praying, protect them! Knowing to take care of the younger ones first, I secured them in the basement and noticed the opened door and quickly ran through it.

There, like a fiery angel, stood Freya with her back to me. I ran as fast as my long legs could carry me to get to her. "_Freya!_" I shouted, hoping to get her away from the blaze incase they sent another missile down. Lightening is the only thing that isn't suppose to strike twice.

"Rain," She turned to me, tears in her eyes and the blood drained from her face, "Mayu is….!"

She didn't need to say anymore as I came to a dead halt in front of her, my eyes locked on the small girl who laid limp in Freya's arms.

_Don't want to be,  
Alone tonight_

The funeral was hollowing for all of us. Freya said she couldn't go. She had seen the girl murdered, she couldn't bare to see her swallowed up for all times by the hungry earth.

"Why do people have to die?" She screamed to me before collapsing onto my shoulder, crying hard. I couldn't answer her because I didn't know. I didn't know why Mayu did, I didn't know why I was going to. I couldn't give her an answer, I couldn't give her comfort in that way.

A week later and she was only worse. I can't begin to describe what it's like to watch someone you love so much wither away under depression. She wouldn't eat and it hurt me so much. I was a bit mad at her to. Didn't she know how precious her life was? Why would she forfeit it so easily? Mayu wouldn't want that.

"Maybe she wants to die." Was what Yuca said flippantly after I left her room after yet another failed attempt to make her eat. I didn't need to hear it, I hated to think it and before I knew what I was doing, I slammed my hand next to the shorter boys head.

He gave me a slightly bored look before giving a heartless, "Sorry."

I sat in my room that night trying to figure out what I could do to comfort her. Obviously words weren't going to be enough. She needed to see love just as she had seen death and hate. I thought about our previous conversations, particularly the one after Mayu's funeral. She had mentioned snow. Where was I going to get snow?

She wanted to bury the earth in snow and make it look new. I couldn't give her cold, Freya didn't need the cold, or ice because what she needed was something warm and living. She needed something that seemed frail, but would last.

That's when I started to count out my money. It was a messily savings that I had gotten from being a farmhand every now and then at the local farms. Most the time they would pay in food, which helped the orphanage out, but sometimes they'd pay me cash.

I counted it up and calculated all night and come dawn, I was ready to head out. Sister stopped me before I was able to twist the handle on front door. She must have been told by Yuca or one of the younger boys that I didn't have sleep or that I was playing with my money or something.

She asked me where and why I was going out. I turned, with a huge grin, and told her I was going to by Freya's health back. Her old eyes grew sharp and she looked at me with such a fierceness that I almost ran out the door screaming.

"Rain, that money was suppose to go towards medicine or a real doctor's visit." Sister's voice was like steel.

I bowed my head, my grin faded. My long bangs shadowed my eyes. "What is the point of prolonging my life? I'm going to die anyway. She is healthy, she just needs to be happy. I can't be selfish with life."

There was a long pause then a heavy sigh, "You never are, Rain." Sister said, and let me go.

_…Falling so hard so fast this time…_

I spent days out in the field, working only on what I considered Freya's happiness. I didn't visit her and Sister didn't even know what I was doing. I would drag myself in at the dead of night and collapse in my bed and then, at dawn, I would go out to the field and work all day.

It went like this for almost a week. I had a single minded ambition and I was going to get it done. My cough was getting worse because I was abusing my body beyond the point it was suppose to be. I wasn't eating properly and I wasn't getting the rest that the Sister's friend insist I get.

I had one image in my head. One goal.

Her smile. Her song.

I wanted her to smile, I wanted her to get better. This was the only thing I knew how to do, I knew how to act and be nice. At least that is what they always told me. She was worth it, though. To see her live was worth killing myself.

I kept working on the seventh night, though my hands were blistered and my entire body ached. I had to finish it _tonight_. I wasn't sure I could make myself get up another day to come work out here. But more importantly, I don't think she'd last much longer in her state. The sooner I got this accomplished, the sooner she'd come back to us.

_Oh, I want to say this right  
And it has to be tonight_

It took what I thought was forever to plant all those flowers.

And when I put the last bud into the ground, I leaned back and ended up falling into the soft bed of buds. It was wonderful. They were soft and smelled like heaven, or at least what I would think heaven smelled like.

These flowers were the only way I could show Freya that life was worth living, not for the tragedies, but for the small blessings. For love and friendship was enough reason to live.

My body thanked my stubborn will for giving into sleep that night. And I woke up to something I never though I'd hear again.

She was playing.

She was singing.

She was living.

I felt tears of joy well up in my eyes, but they wouldn't be shed. Her song turned into a bitter cry of words, Freya was letting her entire heart out that night. And then she smiled at me and I let out the breath I hadn't even known I'd been holding.

After Freya's smile, I swear all the aches and pains just melted away.

She sat down next to me after a few minutes and brushed her hands over the flowers. Even though she was up, her heart still was on her sleeve. For being so young she was tired.

"Is this your snow, Rain?" She questioned one moment and then added a heartbeat later. "Rain. You know I like Yuca." I went off about the weather and though she instantly got angry with my change of subject, she smiled and let it happen.

I didn't want her to think on Yuca. I---was being selfish. I wanted her to think of me and only me at the moment. I had done all this for her and I wanted her to be happy. Thinking of the boy, my friend, who would probably have let her die, wounded me.

Because communication was never my strong point, I decided to tell her the best way I could. "But this 'snow' won't melt away." I said, a sincere smile on my face. I was trying to tell her, in an abstract way, that I loved her, and that wasn't going to change. I needed her to know that no matter what, just like the flowers, what I felt wasn't going to melt away.

Whether she understood or not, I don't know. All she said was "Thank you, Rain."

Just need you to know…

I didn't want to be left behind, but it was for the best.

Freya was angry and shocked and had no problem calling me an "Idiot" but my mind was made up. I had been getting worse, normally I was able to control my coughs but they had been getting harder to predict. I was so afraid that I was going to start coughing up blood in front of Yuca and Freya.

What would they have done?

Freya would have gone crazy with worry while Yuca---I don't know what he would've done. He had become unpredictable and distant.

I used poor Sister as my scapegoat reason and while Freya's attention was on the short woman, I told them to take care and made a quick exit.

Hurting her was inevitable, poor Freya didn't understand why I wasn't going to go with them. In my heart, I wanted to be with her but I knew better than that. If I went with them, I would only die in front of them.

I couldn't be that kind of burden on their shoulders.

Trying my best to stay away from them, so that they wouldn't be able to pry as to my reasons why I wanted to stay, I would grab my Bible and lay under the trees until dinner time. My stomach could barely hold anything down and I my coughing fits happened more and more.

As I lay there one day, not too long before they were suppose to leave, Yuca found me. He finished a passage in the Bible I wasn't able to read on my own but I smiled still. I had my triumph over words. I could read. Maybe I wasn't very good at it, but I was still able to do it

Then Yuca's strangeness came out again with one simple statement. "…There is no such thing as God." I studied him for a moment before turning away. Such weighty thoughts weren't something I wished to revisit with him. We'd been over something similar to this before.

"I know. You don't actually believe in God. What a bad priest." I gave a half hearted giggle but found my body quickly becoming tired. I didn't understand my strange tiredness. It seemed almost random.

Through the quickly thickness of the haze of tiredness, I was able to tell him that I believed and loved in people. People were real and that I considered him and Freya my gods.

He was my god because he would get to see her live to see old age and bring her happiness. He was able to lead the group in both spiritual and intellectual ways that I could never do.

Freya was the ever loving part of god that I could never seem to quiet grasp onto. She loved everyone freely and was warm and motherly towards them. She was the soft side, he was the feared side.

I was just a human who was to be carried on their wings after my own let me down to join Mayu.

_I don't want to live this life_

The kids held me in a death grip, crying and begging me to come. I was sure I'd have a bald patch from where they kept tugging on my hair. The bus driver waited patiently as the children clung to me and Yuca packed away their things.

Then she showed up. Freya was in the nun's habit. Her tan skin didn't go well at all with the bleach white and the dark black. It wasn't who she was. But I knew better than to say anything that would make her leave me mad. It was going to be the last time I saw her, I wanted her to remember with a smile not with a frown.

I thought a short and simple fair well would be best, no need to prolong this for either of us. So I smiled at her, "Well, time to part. Goodbye."

She punched me! I'm not talking about a restrained punch that is only to make a point, I'm talking about proving she has been raised with boys no hold punch! "You butthead! Show some sorrow! How can you say good-bye without shedding a single tear!" Her anger fled away under the tears she began to cry. "How could you?"

Freya, if I started to cry what would you have done? I wanted to cry, I wanted to go with you but I couldn't. I didn't want you to disappear, if even for a second, because I wasn't strong enough to be there for you.

I hugged her. I broke my rule about not wanting to know what she felt like in my arms because I couldn't take her tears away so I gave them somewhere to go. It only took her a few seconds for her to ask me to write her a letter. When I said I couldn't write, she jumped out of my arms and screamed at me to practice.

Ah, there was the tomboy girl I grew up and fell in love with.

"You…You really are too, tall aren't you, Rain? I can't give you a good-bye kiss like this." I hit my knees. I'm not sure what in me told my knees to meet the ground but I did.

Freya stood in stunned silence before giving me a warm smile and bending down to give me a soft kiss on the cheek. I can still remember exactly how it felt and how my heart rate rose significantly.

She kissed me. My world stopped, the tears I'd been holding back welled up in my eyes but I refused to cry. Freya was having trouble enough leaving me behind without seeing how much pain I was in at the same time.

The one thing I tried so hard to avoid, I couldn't. I tried to avoid her touch, her hands, her lips, everything I avoided becoming too close to because I didn't want to have that scar on my heart.

"I---I could have loved you." She whispered softly before turning and running to the bus. The scar of her kiss would be nothing compared to the depth of the scar of her words. Why did she have to say that to me? I had to watch her run to the bus, from me now and forever.

I didn't want us to end this way but mostly, I didn't want to watch her go.

I don't want to say goodbye

I watched that bus until I could no longer see it as a speck on the horizon. The quietness of the land settled in firmly on my hearing and my heart cracked again. Making my way into the building again, I shut the door. Before I could draw another breath, the coughing fits stole my breath away.

When I was done, I was sitting on the floor, leaning on the doors. My hands were covered with blood. Just more proof as to why I couldn't go with the rest of my family. Sister came to me then, asking me if this is really what I wanted.

I did what I always tried to do, I gave her a smile and told the truth. I didn't want to die in front of Freya, have her cry and starve herself. Then again, I said as the sadness started to set in, maybe she wouldn't react to my death the same why she reacted to Mayu's. I didn't want to take that chance.

I would have been greedy to go, and even more so to ask her to stay. I didn't want to die alone, I didn't want her to see me die. The last thing I could ever wish for her was to be free from her pain, and for her to be happy. I didn't want to break anyone's heart, but in my mind, it was better that mine should break than hers.

It was about to stop beating within months, what did it matter if it was broken?

My time was short, everyone else was sure to need her more. They would actually be able to be there for her.

I was just a flower quickly withering.

With you I wanna spend  
The rest of my life

I spent my days attending to the needs of the church and my nights attempting to write her letters, as I promised. I tried a million different openings. I could write the entire letter in my head but for some reason, I just couldn't get it to come out on the paper. She was on my mind all the time.

Was she happy?

Did she miss her snow?

Did she miss the church?

Where the children happy?

…did she miss me?

I wanted to ask her all these questions, I wanted to see her smile again. I wanted her to come back and say that she could love me again. Those were the words that I lingered on.

Freya…

_…What did I say, what did you do?…._

Within a week of my last attempt of writing a letter to her, Sister came clean. She confessed her sins and I was out of the front doors, running past the field of flowers and blindly making my way to laboratory they had taken my family to butcher them.

No matter how fast I might have been going, it still felt sluggish. My lungs burned and begged me to stop but my heart wouldn't listen. The image of one of my friends lying there, dead and mutated by a scientists hands wouldn't leave my head.

I wouldn't let myself think of Freya in the same way, if I did---I would have gone insane. To this day, I'm not sure how I made it to the complex and I'm not sure how I knew where to find her, but I hunted her down.

Making my way through all the floors, I checked every room, ignored the dead bodies and the distinct smell of death. There was nothing I could do for them. I had to protect the living or those who I hoped where still living.

When I found the right floor, where all the holding cells where, I saw one of the doors still shut and threw it open. There she was, the most beautiful sight I had ever seen, her head was down and when I burst through the door she turned to look at me with sad eyes.

"Thank God. You're Okay. Freya." I said in huffs. Before I could collect another breath, she was in my arms, screaming out in pain I had never known existed in the world. I knew she was in pain when she begged me to take her back, she wanted to escape this prison. I was happy to oblige.

Grabbing her hand firmly, I began to run the way I had come. But it wasn't long before my sickness ruled over my desire to give her what she wanted. My breath became short and I could feel the coughs wanting to be racked out of my body. When I stopped, covering my mouth in case any blood might come, she gazed at me with wide eyes.

Thankfully I had the letter I was going to send her in my pocket since I was going to mail it in the morning, and handed it to her. She got upset when she saw nothing but her name. She called me an idiot and I was able to suppress my need to cough for a bit as I smiled at her. I pointed out the good ones to her, and that's when it hit her.

It was like she hit a brick wall. Her eyes began to pour with tears as she crashed into my chest. "We can't go back, can we?" I couldn't answer her again as she said she wanted to go home.

I could take her anywhere she wanted to go at that moment, but I couldn't take her back. There was nothing but a nun who had put a building before the children. The children--God, I didn't even want to think about where they were or _what_ they were. I couldn't take her back to that place we knew, I could only stand there in a cold shock as it really set in for me as well.

My eyes focused on a dark figure that appeared against the barren land all around. It moved closer and my heart leapt for joy as I recognized who it was.

"_Yuca!_ You're okay…" But that was the last thing I ever said as the boy I once was. The bullet, I didn't hear it let out of the gun and I didn't see it. I just felt her sudden letting go. I turned to where she had been only a moment before and I had to look down.

My heart stopped again.

There lay one of my gods, blood pooling around her frail body. I turned my eyes to the other 'god' of mine who still had the gun raised. My thoughts were consumed with only one thought, one burning question.

WHY?

_…Everything's changed, we never knew_

There was almost a blessing when he pulled that trigger again. It was just completing the death of the boy I was and the man I might have been. He robbed her of her future and gave me a borrowed one. I owed him for my life, but I didn't want it.

Maybe he knew that's what I would think as I sat there, listening to him. He hadn't known about my sickness but he healed me of it. Gave me the future that I thought I lost and all those lives he stole he put their lifetimes in me.

I now bared their souls in my battered body that wanted nothing more than rest. Rest was forever deprived from me. But, as he made the bet, I knew that this body would have to live on. I cried because, as he held that gun to his head, I knew I was loosing the last part of who I had been.

He was a cold blooded murderer, but Yuca was still a part of my past. And when he pulled that trigger? I felt my new heart shutter. He fell down in a bloody, messy heap. The last of my family, dead.

I noticed the cross on my chest then. Ugly and marred with his sins. I carried his sins and he left me alone to do that. I didn't know what to do, frantically, seeking some proof that I might be awaken from this nightmare, my eyes landed on her.

All the pain she had screamed about before, I understood as I looked up at her. Her white dress marred by the dark red blood stains. My entire heart was hers and now hers was stilled. I screamed then, letting the rage and pain out. My entire world had been ripped away from me and as a final, cruel joke, he strung her up like a lifeless doll.

I'll never know what type of woman she would have become or if she would have loved me should I have never been diagnosed with the fatal disease. All those questions had to go unanswered.

And I guess I'll never know why or how I fell in love with a bratty six your old girl I first met eleven years ago.

_How did I fall in love with you?_


End file.
